I wish I could build one of these

I'd like to build one out of some plywood.......Hmmmmmmthere's another idea for this summer.

Crazy beautiful!

I would opt for something that looks like the first one, but made of wood. Maybe the second bike when I am retired and have too much time to sand for days and days....

Yes, I know. I just had to.

biggoolies said:

Yes, I know. I just had to.

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It would take a loooong time to sand one of those from a piece of wood.

Don't think you'd be able to replicate all those curves with cardboard.

diggler said:

Well they said that 4 bucks a gallon couldn't happen either. Actually 7 bucks a gallon might be a bit conservative considering a looming war with Iran...and the eventual shutdown of the Straits of Hormuz. When you see Americans flocking to Mexico to buy gas, well it just goes to show you our current state of affairs.

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Since the gasoline from mexico is not environmentally clean It also goes to show what the average person things of tree huggers

Back in my school days there was a company called FiberFab that sold Glass Fiber kit vehicles. The one that most fascinated me was called the SCARAB.
It was a three wheeler with two wheels in the front and one in the back.



It was basically a VW Bug front suspension bolted to a small welded frame. The back of the frame had a diagonal post that mated to the front of a motorcycle with the front forks removed. There were a couple radius arms at the right and left just behind the passenger and driver that bolted to the bike to stabalize it with the three point connection.

The original plans called for a 900cc Kawasaki but smaller bikes could be used.
My Dad and I pondered getting a stripped frame from a bike junk yard along with a mag rear wheel with tubless tire for the basic set up.

Dad wanted to make something with a Deutz Air Diesel and a Lister Xmission to power the thing and I was then considering an electric golf cart to strip and build into the project platform. Dad couldn't find a tranny with a reverse in it, and I fugured the electric had the reverse. We talked about AC for it
and I was up for a small gasoline Briggs & Stratton to run a compressor and alternator with built in voltage regulator.

I figured the platform bare would weigh less than 750 lbs and the real weight would be in the motor, batteries, and AC & electric heat system. Dad thought it would be a brick to drive and I couldn't see it as worthwhile without a reverse. So, we got it out of our system with the research back then. The things had an odd gear shift arrangement as you can imagine
and the refinement of the instruments and throttle were given little consideration by FiberFab.

I've always been amazed at the things I've wanted to do where part of what
I wanted to work with was so far ahead of the technology. The Scarab had beautiful styling even though the marketing guys fell in love with the lime gold
metal flake paint job and tubeless mag wheels on bikes were just entering the market then.

Even when I started on the inter net with windows 95 what was being talked about then only became reality late into XP, unless you were in a business with servers and T1 or T3 broad band. Streaming video being one example back then.

So if I were to build a Scarab today I'd have to buy it as a 30+ year old kit
one piece at a time and fit it with the electric drive I originally imagined. Today I'd usea salsbury clutch (infinately variable ratio pulley controlled with a liner acutator) The thought has even crossed my mind of trying to adapt the runing gear of a totaled Honda Insight with a electric only drive system, where the motors are in the front wheels. (if of course I could adapt the spindels to accept the motors.

In our High school auto shop we built a electric car...We used a 1979 Honda Civic donated by a junk yard. We used a motor out of a old fork lift from the school that they said did not work anymore.

My Uncle before he retired had a machine shop (FDI Machine) and he built us a adapter to go from the motor to the stock 5 speed. Got some battery's from Pep Boy's

Don't remember all we did but it was very simple...Top speed I think was around 35mph. We entered into a electric car competition at PIR raceway.
We where competing against a few college's.We did not win and I think we place in 9th place. We got just over 92miles before it went dead.

A news channel from Tucson and Phoenix did a story about it...I have somewhere the article from the newspaper if I could find it I will scan it and post it.

Just curious, did your Uncle say anything about the bolt pattern the adaptor
mated ? Was the Tow Motor like with a SAE#3 bolt pattern and have to go to a
different standard ? I ran across this when Dad and Grandad were talking about converting a car to a diesel engine. Dad wanted a pickup with one of those custom Perkins Diesels from the UK. But he got such a deal on a van from a guy who was going into divorce he bought the van. He reasoned the money he saved on it would go along ways of fuel and probably level out about the same
as the Perkins Pickup.

Ahhh economics, the advasary of a builders joy.

Man, I don't remember It was so long ago back in 1990...I'll find that article when I have time hopefully it will refresh my memory.. I used to have some note's that a had saved but over the years and all the move's I have done I've just lost them.

I'm going to search online at the newspaper, I know they took a ton of pic's...they should have something in thier achives

LOL that's cool. I do the same thing myself. I got a plan sheet for making those 150 mpg carb's laying around here and I haven't turned it up yet.

Back in the 80's there was this group who went from town to town giving talks with hand out info for like $200 bucks a seat. Some friends of my Dad all ponyed up $10 each to send the chief mechanic to the seminar to learn it and come back and teach them how. They took the plan sheet and xeroxed each guy a copy. I got a knock off of the whole thing later. They had those guys on TV talking to a newsman showing him under the hood of this big white Cadillac.

When the shop's chief mechanic got back he mentioned something they weren't talking about under the hood. It was a water vapor injector. He got the guys off by themselves and asked them about it and they "ahem a yeah ahh" well that's to smooth out it's running. (appearantly to cool down the combustion temps and eliminate the explosive pre-det from the ultra lean fuel mixture)

So I'm still hunting for that envelope myself.

The chief mechanic actually thought it was dangerous as they ran the fuel line thru the upper and lower tanks of the radiator like a domestic heating coil to preheat the fuel. The fuel then went into a felt lined air cleaner with an extended upper air cleaner cover stud. When the cover was installed there was a spring under a wing nut so if a backfire occured the lid could rise to allow a burp and then snap back to keep a fire from occuring. The bottom of the air cleaner had a 3/8 inch copper tube soldered to it to run coolant thru to help heat the fuel to a vapor. Can you imagine ?

Basically you heated the gasoline to a vapor opposed to an automized spary into the carb. (this is where the "KeroSun" heaters get their tremendous efficiency...they burn the vaporized Kero which comes up thru the cotton wick into the glass fiber final wick which can take the high temps. Thus what burns is Kero vapor) And that's what their principle was with the gasoline.....but I figured it would run so lean they wouldn't be able to keep valves in the Cadillac unless they had had stellite or sodium exhaust valves installed in the heads. (and again not told anyone....like using the water injector)

But that's the experience I had with the 150 mpg Carb. I figure a 460 V8 with water injection rigged with a electric engine heater (like for cold mornings) and starting and running it normally till it reached op/temp would get it up to speed to switch to the low flow regulated fuel supply.

To me if I had to live somewhere like Colorado and drive a couple hundred miles at a stint....it would make sense. But before I did such a mod I'd want to pull the heads and install some righteous exhaust valves in them.

We used to run water injection in our race car's for that very reason. When we raced in the dirt, the rad would get caked with mud and the motor would get hot enough for pre-det.

When I started racing, I used a old 30lb. freon bottle of R-12 (RIP) I would fill it half with water and pressureized it. Ran a hose to a copper tube that I drilled a bunch of small holes mounted in from of the rad with a valve right by my seat.

When the motor would get hot..I'd hit the valve for a few second's and it would wash the mud off the screen in front of the rad and cool the air going in. Funny thing....when I first installed it...In the pit's I would leave the back hood off. Other driver's would always check your car out to see what you got. I would let them see it for a second and then rush over thier and cover it real fast... They would alway's go crying to the officials that I had something illegal.

Just trying to play mind games with them...anything to grab an edge on them.

Walmart was closeing out their vpx tools and i bought a basket full,Their great.HD